On a Dark Desert Highway
by Francis Eugene
Summary: Scoobies deal with some interesting goings-on in the desert


**Title**: On a Dark Desert Highway  
**Rating**: **G** (Safe for kids, home, and work)  
**Pairings/Characters**: X/C, O/W  
**Summary**: The summer without Buffy, the Scoobies have to deal with strange goings-on in the desert.

**AN**: Some time ago the LiveJournal community still_grrr had a challenge wherein (if I'm remembering correctly) the story must use a line from a classic rock song. I had an inkling of an idea, but I was too busy at the time to write it up. Even though the challenge is way, way over, this is what I came up with ...

* * *

Despite the waves of lingering heat from earlier in the day, a cool freshening breeze came up, ruffling Xander's hair. He stopped for an indulgent moment to luxuriate and draw in a deep breath of the chill air--and gagged.

"Eeewwww!! What is that stench?" He held his nose tightly, making his voice sound funny and his eyes bug out.

Oz had noticed and pegged the source of the odor several minutes ago when the four Scoobies first entered through the iron gates. "Warm smell of corpses," he informed Xander, who was behind him, "rising up through the air. We may have soulless company on the way back." Then Oz hurried on after Willow.

Cordelia was also holding her nose. "And all along I thought it was Xander's aftershave."

Xander glared at her. "That's what I like about you." In a husky, mockingly romantic tone, he added, "Tell me all the things that I want to hear!" He smirked as Cordelia huffed and stalked off, leaving him behind.

"Are you sure about this, Willow?" Cordelia demanding when she drew even with Willow and Oz. "There's only just about, well, _everything_ I'd rather be doing than spooking around a creepy, abandoned hotel in the middle of the desert." She stopped to gaze around at all the stones and markers scattered about the grounds. "And what kind of freak builds a hotel with a graveyard anyway?"

"Hey, ghosts and ghouls need vacation spots too, y'know!!" said Xander, who had caught up with his girlfriend and the others.

Cordelia did her best to ignore him as she waited impatiently on Willow. Due to the amount of practice she got she was quite good at the ignoring.

Willow was intently studying a ragged and tattered parchment she had carefully withdrawn from her large purse and hadn't heard Cordelia's question. Oz, looking over Willow's shoulder as they continued forward, answered for her. "This was originally sacred ground of the Maywygashi, the people who used to live in this area hundreds of years ago. The Spanish took the land for one of their first missions in Alta California."

Willow, done now with her scrutiny, picked up the narrative, providing more details from their careful research. "The Spanish soon abandoned it. We're pretty sure it was because of something they had taken away, and it cursed this place."

By now they had all made it fully across the grounds fronting the grand but decrepit structure. They gazed up at the old hotel, its crumbling stucco facade punctuated by broken windows, numerous holes visible in the steep clay tiled roof, several archways collapsed, others nearly so.

Willow shivered. "Anyway, after the Civil War, an ex-Confederate Captain bought the land."

"What was he doing here?" Cordelia asked, curious despite her better instincts.

"He and his troops found something during the war, something that got every one of them killed."

Xander leaned in. "It's called Union rifle fire, Will."

Willow looked annoyed. "No, No. I mean afterward, after they'd all gone their separate ways. Every one of them died mysteriously. And their families too. The Captain was the last survivor and he took off as soon as he heard news of the others. He knew it was something to do with the thing they'd found, and that it was connected with this place." She pointed up at the building.

"And that was?" asked Cordelia.

"We," Willow gestured at herself and Oz, "think it was the thing the Spanish took away and he found: the tribe's ancient and sacred fetish."

Xander snickered. "Y'know, school would sure be a lot more interesting if they let you in on the kinky parts of local history."

"School would sure be a lot more tolerable if they just didn't let _you_ in." Cordelia gave a Xander a pointed look. "And for your information, a fetish is a sacred object imbued with a holy spirit."

"Imbued?" Xander tried, but failed, to taunt her. "Since when do you know what 'imbued' is?" Not that he knew either, of course.

Willow nodded her head. "No, no, no. Cordelia's right, Xander." Willow suddenly looked nauseous when she realized she'd just used the words "Cordelia" and "right" in the same sentence. But she soldiered on, confident it couldn't happen again. "We found a letter from the Captain to his wife describing it, and we think it matches. Anyway, he knew he was cursed until he brought it back. Which he did. But it didn't work. There's still something wrong and he died a miserable death for his troubles." Willow waved back at the graves. "He's probably out there somewhere."

They slowly ascended the badly chipped stone steps leading up to the entrance of the hotel.

"According to county records and other history we dug up, the land was later bought by a wealthy eccentric, who probably wasn't told about its prior history or what it meant to the indigenous people, or anything. He put up the hotel as a spa resort for his wealthy friends. But many guests died mysteriously, and then the Depression hit, and he got wiped out. There've been no records of it ever being bought or used again." Willow looked all around at the signs of decay surrounding them, sand and dust piled up everywhere, dead bushes and trees, junk strewn about, even a few skeletons of small animals, and shivered.

Oz spoke up in a quiet voice. "Now, everyone just seems to know to leave the place alone."

Xander and Cordelia shrugged their shoulders in unison. "So why are we involved, exactly?"

"From what we can tell, even though the Captain brought the fetish back, which was a good, he must not have performed the ceremony to re-join the fetish and the unbound spirit."

"Huh?"

Willow frowned as Oz explained to Xander. "He didn't put the fetish and spirit back together. And the unbound spirit, loose and vengeful, is what's causing trouble. That's where we come in."

"And again, why are _we_ involved?" Cordelia wanted to know, making it clear she was referring specifically to Xander, herself, and doing things actually fun.

Willow turned to address Cordelia. "We need four people to do the rite right." She blinked. "Err, ah, correctly."

Cordelia arched her brow, clearly expecting a better explanation.

Willow sighed. "Four is an important number to these people, like seven is to us. Four seasons, four directions of the compass, four basic elements; stuff like that. So we need four people for the rite."

"And we're just here to join this spirit thingy with this fetish thingy? Like a marriage in holy matrimony or something? And we're the wedding party? Is that it?" summarized Xander.

Frowning her disapproval at Xander's cavalier interpretation, Willow hesitated. "Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that, but, um, yeah, I guess so."

Willow turned and wistfully considered the entire decaying facade. She'd been able to dig up some photographs taken soon after it was built, when everything was fresh and clean, the landscaping done just so, all the landed and wealthy Californians of the Gilded Age ready to relax in a comfortable, convivial, and rustic atmosphere. "This was a such a lovely place."

Cordelia goggled in disbelief. "It's in the middle of a hot and sandy nowhere, Willow. A nowhere in the middle of a nowhere! The nearest mall must be at least a hundred miles away. Must have been hell." She shook her head. "And here I am, stuck in the middle with you." Cordelia clearly had her own ideas of what constituted fun and idyllic, and what did not. Lack of nearby shoe stores definitely put this in the latter category.

The breeze picked again as they continued across the broad veranda, blowing dust in the wind swirling around their feet. Before going in Xander stopped and exclaimed, "Whatwasthat?!" He stood in the doorway, already ajar.

Oz, his canine-sensitive ears perked, listened for a moment. It was just at the limit of his own hearing and he knew Xander must be really keyed up if even he heard something at all. "I think, I think it's a ... bell?" He shook his head to clear it.

Xander looked at Oz. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Unlikely."

"Let's keep moving people, no time for sight-seeing," pushed Cordelia, wanting to get this over with as soon as possible

All four of them shoved their way through the heavy solid wood front doors, and entered the dark lobby. Willow took out a jasmine scented candle she'd brought along and got ready to light it.

"Candles? Hah! We don' neeed no steen-kin candles!" cheerfully scoffed Xander as be hefted a large flashlight. He was prepared and ready for bear. He yelped when Willow grabbed it from him. "Yike! What was that for, Will?"

"We have to do this right. Nothing modern, nothing the Maywygashi couldn't have had. We'll use firelight to find our way." Then she lit up the candle and she showed them the way. They proceeded in silence, accompanied only by the sounds of floorboards creaking under their weight and the susurrus and sigh of the desert wind forcing its way through the numerous openings and crevasses. Cordelia shuddered and, much to his surprise, took Xander's hand.

Xander jumped, then glared back at Cordelia. "Whadja say?"

"I didn't say anything, it was Oz." She looked over at him.

"Not me. It was Willow." Even the unflappable Oz was beginning to look a mite flapped.

"Me?" squeaked Willow, "It was Xander!"

Xander waved everyone quiet and paused to listen more carefully. "No. No. I think maybe it's coming from ... that way?" Xander gulped and pointed down the corridor.

They stopped moving and listened carefully to the whisper of the wind.

"Was that the wind talking?" Xander gulped again.

"Ah-yep. I thought I heard it it say," Oz cocked his head, his features molding into a puzzled expression, "'Welcome'?"

Xander relaxed and smiled. "Heh, at least it's polite."

"Yeah, great, we're just being politely invited in. To our deaths!" Cordelia snapped.

Willow ignored her and held up the candle to better illuminate where they could go from this point, turning her head to look in each of several directions, all equally unappealing. She consulted her notes and a map she had sketched, turning slightly and moving her candle to get a better view, but her forehead remained creased with worry lines.

"I don't know, guys. We have to find the courtyard, but these corridors are all twisted, I can't figure out which way to go."

"Split up?" suggested Oz.

"Are you crazy? No way!" breathed Cordelia. "Every time they split up in the movies, _that's_ when the pretty girl gets picked off. No thank you!"

Willow gave her a brief hurt look.

"Well, it's true," Cordelia said without apology.

Oz, who had been peering about and didn't see the interplay between the other three, finally pointed toward a set of French doors, with panes of broken glass and torn curtains hanging in moldering rags. "Let's try that way."

They slowly crept forward and into the smoking parlor. As they quietly passed through the room, Oz nodded his approval of the beautiful turn-of-the-century period decor. "Nice style. I like it." He and Willow continued on to the doors on the far side of the room.

But when Xander made to follow after them, he was quickly yanked to a halt. "Hey! Oww!" he yelped. Cordelia had not moved and their outstretched arms had hauled him back.

Cordelia was intently studying some of the objects of Oz's admiration, not noticing she had nearly dumped her boyfriend on his rear. She turned on him. "Did you hear what Tiffany's dad bought her? A Mercedes-Benz! Can you believe that?"

"Who? Huh? Where? Huh?!" spluttered the bewildered Xander, looking every which way for the Tiffany demon. When he realized there was no immediate danger he shook himself, muttering, "Okay, Xandman, calm. Yeah, we're being real, real calm now." He scowled at Cordelia. "Context, Cordelia, context!"

"I mean, how spoiled can you get? Dad only got me a BMW, now how is that fair?!"

A furious chorus of "Shhs" come from up ahead where Oz and Willow were leading.

"Look Cordy," Xander whispered, "we're all really twisted up 'cause she got the Mercedes-Benz, and we will surely commiserate later. Much, much, later." Xander nervously looked around. "Right now. Shut. Up!" He didn't usually speak to her so forcefully, but the creaky old structure was really getting to him. He let go of her hand to hurry after Willow and Oz, who had already proceeded on, leaving Cordelia behind.

After a few minutes of considering the general unfairness of life, the universe, and everything, Cordelia noticed she was alone in a very dark room. She immediately took off after the others. She caught up with Willow and Oz, and noticed Xander wasn't with them. She couldn't figure out where she might have passed by and began frantically looking around. She was suddenly very worried for Xander, then suddenly very worried she worried for Xander. _Oh, boy, I really need to see a psychiatrist!_, she thought.

Then Xander reappeared from a completely different direction from whence they came. Cordelia looked confused. "Wh-where di--"

Xander hitched a thumb over his shoulder. "Oh yeah, there's a bathroom on the right." He continued on past.

Willow looked at Oz. "What?"

He patted her on the shoulder, gently smiling, and steered her back on the course they were heading. "Different song."

They passed through the next room and out into an open space. A few fitful breezes reached down into this somewhat enclosed exterior space of the hotel and caused Willow's candle to flicker, yielding a wavering light. It couldn't even illuminate enough to see the far areas of the enclosure, but Willow, who seemed to recognize where they were, became more confident and certain of her bearings. "Okay, guys, this is the courtyard," she informed them as she waved her hand about and then pointed. "So the Master's Chambers should be over there. That's where we'll set up."

They crossed the courtyard and re-entered the hotel. Willow consulted her map, looked up and saw mirrors on the ceiling. "Yeah, this is it. This is where we want to be." This was, according to her calculations, the correct spot of land to perform the ceremony. It just so happened this particular part of the hotel was sitting over it.

As the others stood about watching curiously, Willow took some sand she had collected from outside, and carefully poured it out in four adjoining lines in the shape of a diamond, about four feet by four feet. Then Willow positioned each of them at the corners of the shape she had just created. She ended up facing Cordelia, with Oz and Xander on her left and right, facing each other. After motioning them to sit down she dug into her bag and withdrew various colored candles and some more materials.

"I'm summer, so I have the green candle and this leaf. You're spring," Willow told Oz, giving him the bright yellow candle and the sticky petal of a Joshua tree flower. Xander was informed he was fall and got a red candle and a small pile of dried crushed pine needles. "And Cordelia, you're winter." Cordelia received just a dun brown candle.

"This shade simply will not work with my top. Can I get Oz's candle?"

All three glared at her.

"Okay, okay." Cordelia relented.

Willow next spread out a manuscript in front of her. She looked at it in deep concentration to make sure she wouldn't miss any steps.

"Wait. Wait a minute!" Xander exclaimed, "Where's the groom?"

"Huh?"

"You said we're marrying the spirit and the fetish. I get it. The spirit thing is probably a regular Casper, y'know, floating around here somewhere. But where's the fetish? Don't we need the fetish?" Xander seemed to take inordinate pleasure using the word 'fetish' over and over again.

"We don't actually need it _here_ It just needs to be _somewhere_ on the property, which we know it is because the Captain brought it back. It's just _us_ who need to be in the right place." Willow giggled at her pun. "They will be bound together once we finish."

Xander nodded his head. But Cordelia was getting impatient with Willow's thoroughness. "Can we just get on with it?"

Oz shushed her as he waited on his Willow.

"Okay," announced Willow, with some forced bravado, "I think we're ready." She first opened a small box of sea salt and sprinkled it about in the diamond area in front of them. Once more she consulted the manuscript, re-reading a passage, lips moving silently. She nodded her head and said, "Okay, I need all of you to repeat after me." She began uttered the twisted, tortuous, throat-wrenching words of the ancient text for first cleansing this hallowed ground in preparation for the rejoining.

_ Fl yli kean eag le'toth ese a. Fl yli kean eag lel'et mysp  
ir itc ar ryme. _

"Now each of you light your candles, and put everything I gave you in the middle." The boys and Cordelia lit their candles and placed everything they'd been given, now laid atop the bed of scattered salt, following Willow's example. "Let's join hands," Willow commanded next before speaking the final phrase of the rite.

_ Wea rea llj ustp rison,  
ersh ere ofo uro,  
wnde vic!  
_

They glanced about nervously, the sudden gloom and silence settled down heavily upon them.

"Did it work? Are they married?" quietly asked Xander, "Or did the spirit get cold fetish?"

"I dunno," confessed Willow, "I think so, but it's not clear on what's exactly supposed to happen now." She looked about uncertainly. "I think we can probably just ... leave?" She started to lean forward to clean up and gather the implements of the rite.

The floorboards suddenly heaved and bounced, knocking everyone backwards. Ancient dust rained down upon them as it became eerily quiet again for a minute. Then a deep rumbling from below, more felt than heard, caused each of the Scoobies to jump and scramble back just as the floor cracked open. A lumpy, foul-smelling beast rose up before them, compact and hairy.

Xander pointed at the creature as it slowly rotated to see the four humans surrounding it, malevolent gleaming eyes barely visible under the mat of hair. "If this is them married, I'd hate to see the divorce!"

"I'm not sure Plan A worked," Oz said warily, as he continued to back up.

"Or it did. And we're the consummation!" snapped Cordelia.

Oz blinked. "Good point."

Xander glanced in Willow's direction. "So what's Plan B?" He backed away as he brought out his weapon, a big knife, just in case. He wanted no part of being consumed, or consummated, or whatever this thing had in mind for its honeymoon.

"We weren't supposed to need a Plan B!" Willow uselessly fumbled through all the notes and documents she had. "This should have worked!"

"Maybe it just doesn't like us on general principles."

"What do you mean there's no Plan B, Willow?" angrily demanded Cordelia, "You're always supposed to have a Plan B! It's in the rules!"

The creature, or whatever it was, slowly dropped into a crouch. It swiveled its head to look at each of the humans, measuring which was the greatest danger and which was the weakest, and uttered a deep, low growl before suddenly springing at Willow.

Xander leaped. "Let's go straight to K!"

Cordelia yelled at Xander as he and Oz charged. "K? What's K?"

"Kill it!" Xander jumped on the beast, mindlessly stabbing at it with his steely knife. With little prompting they all attacked in some way, using whatever weapon or implement they might be carrying or could find; stabbing it (Xander), hitting it (Oz and Willow), or thoroughly insulting it (Cordelia). Though its attack on Willow was thwarted, their own counter attacks seemed to have little effect.

"This," Xander gasped, now astride the animal's back, "Beast," he wheezed, swinging again. "Won't," he groaned, hauling back for another blow. "DIE!!!!" He shouted at the top of his lungs.

But, finally, the beast, at last weakened by the wounds it suffered from all sides, dropped and fell forward in a crash.

Still gasping for breath, Xander rolled away to the floor, sprawled on his back. Blinking rapidly, he weakly asked, "We win, right? Yay us?"

"Do you know what the dry-cleaning is gonna cost for this?! No! No, this is most definitely _not_ a win." Cordelia plucked in despair at various spots of gore that had splattered on her ruined blouse and skirt, muttering. "Jeez, and this was one of my favorites."

"You were told to wear appropriate attire for the evening. What'd you expect?"

Cordelia now had a focus for her anger. "That's what you said on the phone, 'Proper Evening Attire'. And "Hotel". Brain-wacked me thought you were finally going to take me on a _real_ date, and that this," Cordelia waved at her ruined ensemble, "to normal-people-not-you," she complained bitterly at Xander, their noses a mere fraction of an inch from each other after he'd stood up, "is what proper evening attire means!"

Xander was just preparing his blistering retort. The difficulty he was having--so often the case when dealing with his girlfriend--is he was in that anticipatory moment when, preternaturally aware how she was so gorgeous, so cold, he himself could as easily turn to fire or cold as ice. He could go either way. He trembled internally while he waited for things to sort themselves out.

"Guys! I got a feeling something ain't right." Oz quietly interrupted the now-furious-soon-to-be-snogging couple. He waved at the carcass of the beast they had just defeated, slumping in a spreading pool of its own ooze. It seemed to be wriggling, as though something inside were trying to work its way out. They also noticed a growing, glowing aura, shimmering and rising from the corpse. It began to expand quickly as the thing inside thrashed with more and more violence.

"Willow?" asked Oz, "What's that?" He pointed at the bulging backside of the beast, puss and gore and blood beginning to spray out from new openings that ripped through the hide with a wet tearing sound.

"Uh oh, this is looking really, really badly familiar," warned Xander, quickly backing away, pushing Cordelia behind him. They all began to edge back.

Willow, clearly flustered by all the unexpected events, babbled. "I-I-I dunno! We did everything right, the candles, and the salt, and the--" Once again she quickly read through all the parchments, scrolls, papers, notes and manuscripts she had brought, not really knowing what she was looking for. Finding nothing, Willow crumpled up everything, letting them drop and scatter all over the floor. "I think maybe we should--" She started edging sideways toward the door.

The carcass split apart as its inner demon child spat and coughed out some bilious spray, very much like clotted and sour milk. It shrieked its rage to one and all, baring the sharpest needle teeth they had ever seen. To a one they were each quite confidently certain this was no ordinary demon they were prepared to deal with.

"Plan R?" asked Oz.

Xander nodded and yelled, "Run Away!" He grabbed Cordelia's hand and dragged her with him as fast as he could.

"Agreed." Oz pushed Willow before him as they took off after Xander and Cordelia, heading for the door, trying to find the passage back to the place they were before. There was no thought of stopping or resting until they were many miles, many hours, away from here.

As they heedlessly ran through the dark lobby, their pounding footsteps rattling across the floor, an old sign wobbled and crashed down, kicking up a choking cloud of dust. Had any of the four would-be heroes bothered to stop and read, it said:

"As a favor to our guests, you can check out any time you like."

_fin_

* * *

**AN2**: Aside from the obvious song the story is strung upon, with several of its lines used, there are a number of other referenced songs, either directly or indirectly.

**AN3**: For those interested in Segue, yes I really am still working on it (just very very _very _slowly)


End file.
